


Listen Closely

by speckledsolanaceae



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Confessions, Ear play, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Partial Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25734466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckledsolanaceae/pseuds/speckledsolanaceae
Summary: From: Mark Lee18:23Heyare we datingLike18:24SorryThat’s super awkwardNot youYou’re not awkwardOr: Dejun and Mark are regularly sexiled by their dating roommates. Mostly accidental feelings ensue.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Xiao De Jun | Xiao Jun
Comments: 58
Kudos: 482





	Listen Closely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cobalamincosel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/gifts).



> Happy unofficial xiaomark day!!! It's Mark's birthday on the 2nd and Xiaojun's on the 8th, and the 5th is right smack in the middle and perfect, so viola ^^ ♡ I know this is a _super_ out there ship, but I did this 100% for fun and oh my GOD was it fun. I hope anyone who gives this a gander enjoys it, too.

Breakfast: leftovers. Mark is once again reminded that tteokbokki is a curse on the second day; he’s disappointed. Johnny steals some of the fish cake out of the sauce, which Mark doubts goes well with coffee. Johnny’s wrinkled face supports this intuition.

“Kun’s coming over tonight,” says Johnny from where he closes the refrigerator.

Mark chews into his stiff rice cakes that even time in the microwave couldn’t help. His eyes haven’t calibrated, so everything’s still a little dull and fuzzy. “Okay.”

“Please,” Johnny says, and Mark looks up from the red-stained styrofoam dish, the kitchenette countertop digging into the small of his back. Johnny has his mouth pressed to the lip of his coffee mug, peering at Mark with this intent gaze that Mark doesn’t have the brain-space to interpret.

“Okay,” Mark repeats.

“Dude.”

“What?”

“Kun,” Johnny presses. “He’s coming over tonight. Are you going to force me to say that I’m kicking you out?”

Now, Kun is good and so is Johnny, and Mark has only occasionally had a problem clearing out for his roommate, but—“You could have just said so,” Mark grouses, and Johnny throws one hand up in the air like he’s banishing a demon by the power of god.

“I’ll wait til you’re awake next time, _I guess,”_ Johnny says. “It’s not like I don’t do this every week.”

Which is nice, because Mark had once walked into the dorm and heard the fucking before he even saw anything, and there were certain sounds Johnny makes that are now tainted forever.

Maybe he should have a problem with it since he’s being ritualistically kicked out of their living space every Monday or Tuesday depending on how the planets align. But it’s always been a fairly pleasant experience to have this happen, because ever since the first sexile, there’s always been Kun’s roommate. Dejun.

Dejun, who comes over when Kun kicks him out and is always home when Johnny kicks Mark out.

It’s been their own ritual for…god…what? Like, a few months? To hunker down and order some food or bring snacks over if the paychecks are tight, to study if necessary or read some books or watch a show. Last time, Dejun kicked his feet up into Mark’s lap and read him funny Amazon reviews like he was a character in a play, and Mark ducked over his shins and laughed until he cried.

So, you know. Endorphins. Or whatever.

“I’ll be out by six,” mumbles Mark as he sucks the sauce off his chopsticks, and Johnny drains back the rest of his coffee.

“Seven’s fine. Tell Dejun hi for me?” Johnny says, curving his back inward so Mark can squeeze past him and toss the takeout container.

Mark’s already thinking about how he has to return the book Dejun lent him last session. Date? Fuck. “Will do.”

* * *

**From: Mark Lee**

_14:06_

Hey Dejun

**From: Dejun Xiao**

_15:42_

Hello fellow sexiled

**From: Mark Lee**

_15:58_

Haha

Kun’s coming to mine

Should I order?

**From: Dejun Xiao**

_16:06_

I got it

**From: Mark Lee**

_17:31_

Thanks man

**From: Dejun Xiao**

_18:12_

np <3 

**From: Mark Lee**

_18:23_

Hey 

are we dating

Like

_18:24_

Sorry

That’s super awkward

Not you

You’re not awkward

_18:25_

The <3 wasn’t awkward either

It was cute haha

_18:37_

It’s okay if we’re not

Maybe I’m overthinking things haha

I’m not asking you out or anything

_18:42_

Fuck I’m sorry man

I shouldn’t have texted that

* * *

Mark scrubs his hands through his hair and presses the heels of his palms into his eyelids, inhaling deep and wondering just what expression he’ll be met with when he walks into Dejun’s apartment. Assuming he lets him in.

God, he hopes the door’s not locked.

He drops his hands to stare listlessly at the clothes he’s ripped out of his dresser. The piece of furniture is scooched up against the side of his bed and hardly opens, but his room is small and having both a desk and a dresser means he navigates it all like a living tetris piece.

He’s not normally claustrophobic, but maybe he can’t breathe so well right now.

It’s not like they’ve been friends for that long, and they really _don’t_ hang out together aside from the times Johnny and Kun sexile them, but Mark’s starting to realize that it would upset him if he stopped hanging out with Dejun—especially if it was because he put his foot in his mouth like this.

They don’t do all that much during their…dates…but, they also just. Do so _much._ They’ve talked about things Mark very rarely feels comfortable telling anyone—Dejun knows something as trivial and impactful as how Mark had slipped off the roof at the age of eleven, he knows about when he’d been scared a few years ago that his parents would get divorced, he knows Mark’s religious beliefs, he knows his favorite songs and has listened to Mark talk his ear off about lyrics and poetry and rap, and…god. He doesn’t want to lose this.

But it’s not like it’s one-sided either. Dejun’s told him a lot. Mark knows about how moving halfway through high school for Dejun fucked up all his dreams and that he had to start from scratch, he knows about how he stayed in China alone to finish the school play that he’d starred in and it had been the most major mental break of his life, and trivial things too like Dejun having never tried watermelon before Mark and loving the beach more than the mountains. Mark feels genuinely close to him.

And now he feels like he’s maybe just gone and ruined something perfect.

He stuffs a loose black shirt over his head and shakes his legs into some jeans, powering through slipping on a belt, slapping his face, checking his hair in the mirror on the door like he’ll like what he sees.

If he’s late, it’s not because he forced himself so close to the 7:00 dot that he has to run. It’s because he stalls at the door with his hands sweating around the borrowed book, wiping his nerves onto his jeans, dreading, dreading, dreading.

After who knows how long, Mark places his sweaty hand on the doorknob and pushes into the apartment Dejun shares with Kun. For the last month at least after Dejun told him to stop being formal, Mark’s been just walking in when he arrives, but it’s harder this time.

Dejun’s not visible from the entrance, so Mark quietly shuffles out of his shoes and into his designated flip flops. He’s never been to Dejun’s outside of the sexile nights, but the flip flops have been a thing for a while now, and he has his own for Dejun too, so.

Mark is stressed again.

He drifts his free hand along the wall, almost like it’ll be easier to hug it if Dejun comes at him with a knife for being a dumbass. There are only a few lights on, and the apartment smells like plain old boy, which means the takeout hasn’t arrived yet.

Mark sees the couch with its blanket tossed over the back and Dejun’s leather jacket slumped down the arm, a textbook on the dinked-up surface that’s half coffee-table, half dinner-table in front of the couch. He slides the book onto the surface, skimming it to the other end and wiping his hands on his jeans. 

There’s a streetlamp gnawing through the unobstructed window where a few succulents squat, and then there’s Dejun opening the door to his bedroom.

“Mark!” he says, and Mark’s baffled as he smiles—casual, placid, pleasant. He’s wearing that tank top with the two small holes at the hem, lean arms nothing to gawk at (but perhaps Mark’s off his game because he feels like Dejun has put him in a headlock). He’s wearing track pants. His hair is pushed back. There’s a red, picked-at blemish on his jaw and a patch of skin past the sloped neck of his top that looks like he’s been pinching his collar bones with hard fingertips. “Sorry I didn’t respond to your texts—” This next part Mark swears he hears in slow motion: “—I haven’t looked at them yet.”

A wheeze builds up in Mark’s chest and he breaks before he has a moment to think.

 _“Don’t,”_ Mark blurts, and feels like he’s being actively obliterated and forced back together just to say something dire. “Don’t look at them.”

Dejun physically pauses on his way toward Mark, one bold brow twitching up, eyes narrowing as his hand smooths down his own hip for his pocket and he gives his husky, halting laugh. Mark blanches. “Why? What…did you do?”

“Please—”

“You’re tempting me—”

Mark lunges the three-foot distance as Dejun slips his phone out of his pocket, the pastel green casing flashing, Mark’s fingertips grazing Dejun’s wrist before Dejun is tilting back, spine curved, phone out of reach, and so close Mark can smell the pre-shower summer sweat on Dejun’s skin.

“Did you send me a dick pic or something?” Dejun asks, laughing to the extent that his nose is scrunching, hand awkwardly both steadying Mark’s waist and pushing him away. Mark can see every single one of his lashes perfectly and the chapped cut of his li—no don’t look at his lips.

Mark’s never sent dick pics to _anyone,_ nor does he happen to have any on his phone. But given that it was the first thing that popped into Dejun’s head, Mark figures it must be the most harmless option. Doesn’t save him from any humiliation, though.

“Yes,” Mark says, voice breaking in his panic, “more or less.” 

There’s a slight moment of breathlessness between them as Dejun looks between Mark’s eyes, phone just barely out of reach. Dejun is shorter than him, but Mark still isn’t tall enough, and now Mark is painfully aware of how it feels to have Dejun’s body right up against his own.

Mark drops off his toes, curbing a shudder of self-awareness, and Dejun gives a little self-conscious shake, too, from the tips of his fingers to a little shimmy in his shoulders that makes Mark want to laugh despite the nerves in his throat.

Now that he’s started this mess—this mistake, maybe—Mark’s realizing just how wonky his feelings actually are. He’s wondering just how long he’s been so… _into_ Dejun. That soft slope of his nose and all the sharpness, all the heavy-lashed grace of his eyes. He _likes_ him. Fuck. Oh, damn him—damn Mark Lee. Damn his blind ass for stumbling into this shit before he realized he cares about the consequences.

“Was it an accident?” Dejun asks, the hand gripping his phone lowering slowly.

“H…uh?” Mark manages. He’s having an epiphany with not a lot of brain space to spare, and Dejun is really, really looking at him.

“Did you—” Dejun laughs, that shaky tremble in his throat, the tightening of his eyes, the friendly but unsure twitch of his mouth. “—mean to send me dick pics? Do you…want me to see your dick, Mark?”

A fissure electrifies through the middle of Mark’s epiphany. “Why do you have to _say_ it like that?” he complains, and Dejun laughs for real this time, flinching forward before tipping back, right heel shifting so he doesn’t have to stumble. Mark’s own laughter bubbles up to meet Dejun’s and his hip burns from where Dejun removes his hand.

“You sent them to me, though!” Dejun protests as he cradles his phone in both hands. “I’m just—I’m just trying to figure out if I should give my phone over or—” Dejun takes in a tight breath of air through his nose. “—if I’ll be missing out.”

Mark pats his own cheeks the second he realizes he’s on fire, nearly insta-sweating with the ferocity of the flush that rakes past his eyeballs. “Oh shit, uh. I mean.” They’re still standing at the side of the sitting room, standing inches from each other, standing like idiots. “I mean, it’s not. They’re not. Really dick pics. They’re probably worse.”

He’s blinked at. Dejun furrows his eyebrows then sucks his bottom lip between his teeth as he drifts his thumb over the lock button on his phone. Mark’s really starting to sweat, now, and when Dejun releases his lip from the bite, he’s worse for wear. “I really—like what? Like you sent me, what, a picture of your fingers up your ass?” Dejun’s blush is splotchy and nervous. Mark is winded for the crucial second he could have interjected. “Do…do you want to fuck?”

It’s all Mark can manage not to do a 180 spin, drop into a crouch, and cry out. Instead, he crosses his hand over his eyes and counts to five.

One.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t—” says Dejun.

Two.

Dejun’s hand is on the crook of his elbow, overheated and dry. “I’m just trying to figure out—”

Three.

“—what’s happening. I don’t mind at all. I just—”

Four. Fuck it.

“I asked if we were dating,” Mark blubbers into the ether between them, feeling like he’s speaking through jello. He refuses to drop his hand and so all he sees is the red-tinted darkness of his eyelids. “I texted you asking if we’re dating.”

The doorbell gives a prolonged honk, a possessed thing breaking the moment like a fragile layer of glass shattering throughout the entire apartment atmosphere.

 _“Christ,”_ says Dejun, tone agitated. “Hold on, Mark.” And his hand drops from his elbow.

Mark can feel him whisk past and drops his hand only then, staring down the empty hallway. A part of his brain is sinking down against the wall right next to him and having a goddamned sob session, a pity party, an I’m-an-idiot party because Mark _wants_ to date Dejun, he realizes, and now he’s botched it.

Two to three months ago, they both came out to each other. Dejun as “bi-kinda-I-might-be-just gay-I’m-still-figuring-it-out-but-I-definitely-like-guys” and Mark as “uh-god-haha-I-haven’t-thought-that-much-about-what-I-am-past-gay.” That had been the end of the conversation. Johnny was demi-bi, Kun was presumably gay enough to warrant a semi-weekly sexile, Dejun was bi, Mark was gay. Half of Mark’s friends from high school came out as soon as they took steps into proper independence. This was par the course, and there was no reason for Mark to suspect he had feelings for Dejun.

What a blind-sider. _Damn,_ he’s dumb.

The way Dejun speaks with the delivery person is choppy and nervous, and somewhere in there is a swear and a plastic rustle, an apology, a laugh. Then the door is closing and there’s a clumsy susurrus and _plunk_ of the bag being dropped on the coffee table, probably, and Mark’s too scared to turn around.

“Mark,” Dejun says, and Mark nearly jumps out of his skin because the boy is right behind him. His voice is so fucking close. “Sorry—”

Mark can feel his neck streaking with red, but he turns anyway. “It’s alright. I was being paranoid, I—”

“I’m apologizing for making you jump,” Dejun rushes. “Shut up.”

Mark shuts up.

He’s never seen the dent of concentration between Dejun’s eyebrows dig so deep.

“Dates are about intention,” Dejun says, words deliberate even as he manages to sound frenetic. “Were you dating me?”

The blush comes on strong again. “Did you want to fuck me?” he shoots back, and Dejun’s lips part. He laughs something strangled.

“Not until like, two minutes ago when I thought you sent me dick pics.”

Mark’s winded.

They stare at each other for what’s probably only as long as three seconds but feels like an entire minute. An entire minute of the skittish flick of Dejun’s gaze down from Mark’s eyes to his mouth and back again. His fingers splay and tap his outer thighs in a display of discomfort while Mark imitates still life.

“I think I was probably dating you, yeah,” Mark admits finally, and Dejun’s fidgeting turns erratic, hands climbing up to his hair and tugging at his forelock, rubbing at his nape, lips twisting around an embarrassed, self-conscious exhale. “I didn’t realize it, though,” Mark says, and then adds, “Sorry.”

“Mmng,” vocalizes Dejun, fingers crawling over his expression as it twists and knots. “Fuck, I’m so dumb.”

Jesus, that sounds familiar.

“I’ve liked you for so long,” Dejun says.

That one sounds less familiar.

When Mark reaches for Dejun, prying his narrow arms away until his hands fall, Dejun lurches like a disrupted wind-up toy, closing the distance. Mark manages to blurt out, “Can I kiss you?” just as they graze lips and his brain dissolves like cotton candy dumped in a puddle.

Dejun answers by grabbing him by the hip and bringing their lips together. 

It’s clumsy. Jesus, it’s clumsy, but Mark hasn’t been fantasizing in the slightest, so it’s the pure, unadulterated attraction and surprise and fondness until Dejun’s drawing back and saying, “I’m not a bad kisser.” and Mark buckles down on delight and affection and a roll of laughter that makes his skull chime like hollow bronze. 

They’ve both dated—Dejun a lot more than Mark has, actually, if he’s remembering one of their conversations correctly (the benefits of dating apps, which Mark hasn’t felt compelled to try). He knows Dejun’s probably an _excellent_ kisser, and even if he isn’t…so what?

“I believe you,” Mark says, pressing closer, “I think.” Normally Mark’s the one getting teased in his friendships, but Dejun caves with embarrassment 50% of the time, so the field’s pretty even between them. He caves now, too, head tilting forward, bumping his pointed nose against Mark’s, breath pushing out against his lips in a bit-back laugh. “I’m probably not that great,” Mark tells him to take the edge off, but Dejun just crinkles his nose and locks his fingers together at the small of Mark’s back, sinking into a kiss that’s less jumpy, less stiff lips and anxiety. 

It’s alright. It’s nice. Dejun’s lips are small and smooth and Mark has his thumb against Dejun’s pulse. This confirms, for Mark, that he likes Dejun in at least this way, with Dejun’s thin chest against his and the takeout growing cold so they can figure out how not to knock noses.

And then it shifts. Dejun releases one hand and presses his fingertips up Mark’s spine, and Mark curves for him, murmuring a stupid-ass “hi” against Dejun’s lips, a breathy giggle, as his back muscles flinch at the attentive, soft pressure.

Mark doesn’t know what Dejun’s doing until he slides his fingertips over and presses into a knot in his back Mark didn’t know he had. The pleasant ache has his mouth popping open with a small sound like a foot-triggered trash can.

Dejun shifts up off his heels, slots their lips together to cut off the laugh Mark has bubbling up to the back of his tongue, and nips Mark’s bottom lip to a sting of surprise.

 _“Hey_ —h-hey!” His laughter turns to protestation as Dejun shoves at Mark’s hips to propel him backwards until he’s trying to catch the arm of the couch with his hand while still keeping his grip on Dejun’s waist.

“How long have you liked me?” Dejun asks as he closes the space back up again. His expression is as intense as it gets when Mark says something Dejun disagrees with, though Mark thinks this is a little different. 

Plus, Mark’s heart flushes his ears the second he realizes that he’s been forced to sit on the arm of the couch. He knows what he’s been set up for. He’s written and read enough fanfiction. “Well,” he swallows, “I’ve _liked_ you for ages but I didn’t know how much until like, five hours ago.”

“We’re dating,” Dejun says firmly, one hand rising to press against Mark’s chest. 

“Okay,” Mark says, delighted. He’s prepared to fall when Dejun pushes him, but it still wrestles a sound of impact from his throat. By the time Dejun’s straddling him, Mark has scooted back and melted into the worn chenille of the cushions, ready to tug him in, smiling too big for his face. “Are we moving too fast?”

“I’ve wanted to kiss you from day one,” Dejun says, bracketing Mark’s head with his elbows and looking generally so nice above him—Dejun is truly, undeniably striking, but there’s something about knowing him (and kissing him) that gives his looks depth. Mark keeps his eyes open until the last second, taking in the fact that Dejun’s eyes aren’t quite so dark from up close.

“Okay,” he whispers, looking at the faint radial furrows of a beautiful lighter brown in Dejun’s irises. _That’s a lot of pining,_ he thinks, parting his lips as Dejun lowers his head and puzzles a kiss into him. Mark’s smile falls away, but not for loss of the daylight in his chest.

Reclining is different. Mark wraps his arms around Dejun, his brain making radio noise as he feels Dejun’s pelvis weigh down on his own, so close that Mark can feel every breath Dejun takes against him.

The novelty has worn away slightly in just the right ways—less nerves and more muddy brass peeking gold as they both sink into learning the patterns and cadences of each other’s mouths. For a while, Dejun kisses like he moves—a little twitchy, a little distracted by the way he’s using his fingertips to touch through Mark’s hair; Mark enjoys all of that, realizing with every passing second that he’s relieved and the inside of his chest is crowing like a dumbass peacock, too—and then Mark tests a boundary, and through the sucked-in breath coming from Dejun’s nose, Dejun kisses deeper.

Mark gets to feel the imperfect expanse of Dejun’s skin under his shirt and experience Dejun’s tongue petting past his lips, and perhaps Mark’s breath snags and stalls in his chest, his brain too committed to feeling it all for him to breathe.

But eventually he has to, and he’s trapped in a wet gasp of breath as Dejun strokes his tongue past Mark’s top teeth and makes Mark suddenly very aware of how sensitive his hard palate is. He shudders through an open inhale and scrapes his nails against the skin of Dejun’s back, Dejun’s muscles flinching as he draws away and lets Mark gain his breath properly.

They stare at each other for a good few seconds again, but it’s more drinking than puzzling—as well as Mark trying not to let his eyes close against the aching pressure of Dejun’s weight against his crotch. Words are working themselves out in Mark’s throat, but Dejun beats him to it.

“You’re a good kisser.”

Mark takes a single breath, then fights out in the midst of a premature laugh, “You’re not.” The punch to his left pec is a fucking _blow_ Jesus Christ (Dejun’s laughing in complaint, too, and God he likes him)—”I’m kidding! I’m kidding, I swear! You’re so good!” Mark yelps, laughing until Dejun wrestles his way past the forearms protecting Mark’s face and his lips are right up against his ear. 

He whispers, “Fuck you.” with a perfectly-placed roll of his hips.

Mark chokes on a giggled exhale, coughing as blood rushes and the nerves at the side of his head blossom violently at that hiss of a punishment against the shell of his ear.

He’s known, of course, that his ears are sensitive in all the good ways, but now Dejun knows too by the unsubtle shudder and whine of breath escaping Mark’s throat.

“Is that a good reaction?” Dejun asks tentatively, voice soft, bottom lip nudging Mark’s earlobe, top skimming his antitragus, and Mark didn’t realize suffering could feel so nice.

Exhaling against Dejun’s cheek, Mark whispers a breathless “yes” as Dejun takes his lobe between his teeth and sucks. “Oh, f-fuck,” is all Mark can whimper as a frisson of pleasure skids all the way down from his neck to his thigh. His whole entire shoulder goes awol as his mouth stays open and he stares blankly at the red upholstery.

He wants to squirm from the sensation, but he’s pretty much pinned under Dejun and doing that would be cock torture, Mark’s sure. He’s had like. One person in his life actually do anything about this particular erogenous zone, but they’d made it embarrassing and uncomfortable somehow, and Mark has refused to bring it up since.

Dejun, apparently, is a different beast, because he catches on, tugs with his teeth, then skims Mark’s helix with the tip of his tongue, and there’s nothing but static in Mark’s brain. Just crashing waves and his own shallow, vaguely vocal breaths, hands slack against Dejun’s back.

“You’re really sensitive here, huh?” Dejun whispers, a sort of wonder hissing through his fricatives, and the tropical storm in Mark’s head turns both symphonic and explosive.

He can manage an unintelligible mumble and that’s it, lax under Dejun until he drags his tongue right up against his ear canal and god— _god_ it’s so loud and so breathtakingly fizzly that Mark feels it across his whole face and all he can do is hiccup and moan, spasming a little.

It’s overwhelming how much Dejun’s taking him out with just these loud, wet licks against the cartilage of his ear. Mark can hear the open breaths he takes as he laves, the brush of a fingertip on the underside of Mar’s pinna that makes his nerves buzz and murmur.

It feels so fucking good.

Dejun pulls back, but Mark’s brain is butter. “Am I a bad kisser?” Dejun asks, and this is like, so totally different than kissing but _Mark’s brain is butter._

“You’re so good,” Mark says, but it slurs kinda from the static and strong pleasure washing up and down his side like freshly-cracked soda. Dejun nudges Mark’s jaw to the other side with his fingers and Mark exhales deeply and hugs Dejun’s back closer, feeling functionally sort of useless but so easily blissed-out by this small thing. 

“God, you’re so—hhha,” Mark slurs and then seizes as Dejun starts on his other ear, a little more liberal this time, and Mark can’t fucking _think_ through all this seltzer-drenched cotton. His whole body is alight. He might be mumbling worthless things, actually, because he can sort of feel his lips moving.

Whereas it had been mostly just one side of his body before, it’s both sides now, his left tingling pleasantly now that it’s been left alone while his right causes a crazy, delighted ruckus. Mark ends up closing his eyes, mostly blind anyway, right fingertips pressing into the skin of Dejun’s back with every crashing wave.

When Dejun pulls back and kisses him on the mouth, Mark’s ears are wet and he’s a mere suggestion of a boy, catching breaths against Dejun’s tongue as his brain yields nothing and his arousal becomes so prominent that Dejun sitting on him actually hurts.

Mark finally remembering how to use his arms earns him a laugh against his lips, and he wonders if he’s been genuinely out of it as he skates his fingers down and around to the skin of Dejun’s abdomen where he’s pressed up against Mark’s stomach.

“I want to touch you,” Mark mumbles, but it really isn’t an impressive feat of language. Dejun has to ask him to repeat what he said, and Mark doesn’t even have the wherewithal to feel embarrassed that he can’t even fucking _speak_ (granted, Dejun’s lips were against his). Still: “Can I touch you?”

Dejun’s hard, too, and if they had a few more adventures like this under their belts, Mark would straight-up ask Dejun to fuck his face, but that’s a little fast to go from ear-kissing to nudging his uvula.

Either way, Dejun’s response is to lift his hips (Mark downright whines at the weight easing up) and tug his track pants down over his ass himself. He lets Mark slide his hand between his legs and cup him through his boxers.

Where Mark had lifted his head off the cushions, he now drops it again with a gust of an exhale. “You feel good.”

“Jesus, you’re really fucked up from that,” Dejun laughs, endearment scrawled all over the happiest lines in his face.

“Mm I like you.”

“Oh my god.”

Dejun pulls Mark’s touch away with a laugh and crawls off him to hook away all two barriers completely in the time it takes Mark to merely unbutton and unzip.

“Are you okay with this?” Dejun asks as he tries to help Mark halfway out of his jeans and boxer briefs, and Mark unapologetically stares at Dejun’s dick.

He’s uncut. His dick is _nice-looking,_ holy fuck. Mark wants Dejun to dock him.

“Mark.”

“What?” he blurts instantly. “Sorry.”

“Oh my god,” Dejun says again, laughing hard enough to make his stomach spasm under the ratty tank he’s still wearing. “Your ears are that sensitive, huh?”

Mark’s a _terrible_ actor. That was all super genuine. 

All he does, though, is open his mouth as if that explanation will flop out of his mouth. It doesn’t. Finally, he blushes. “Is it weird?”

Dejun’s face goes from fond to almost indignant. _“No,_ it’s not weird. Mark, seriously, are you okay with where this is going?” Dejun gestures. Kind of at their dicks. Mark is back to staring—this time at the cropped dark hair around Dejun’s cock.

“Dude.” He’s kind of getting his wits back. Kind of. “I’m not gonna back away from that dick.” He’s said more poetic things. Probably. 

Dejun does that fitful motion again that he did earlier where his hand pushes at his own face, but he’s smiling. “Stop that.”

“Get on _top_ of me,” Mark pleads. For fuck’s sake it’s not like his dick isn’t out, too. Half-hard, feeling a little exposed. This isn’t really where he thought this night would go, but he’s projected past the land of dreams right into the palms of utopia and this is dumb. He really wants to rut up into Dejun like a teenager.

Simple. Very horny. Mark has his brain back and he _will_ cry.

Dejun lurches a little, then moves to peel Mark’s pants and underwear right off his legs before straddling him, going a little pink when their cocks bump. Mark’s stomach flinches.

“We can’t get cum on this couch,” says Dejun.

“Amazing,” Mark says. “Say that again.”

 _“No,”_ Dejun protests and takes both of them in his hand, handsome fingers looping nicely, and Mark feels like his veins are hosting triathlons. 

“What happens if we get cum on the couch?” Mark mumbles, tilting his head back a little to enjoy the dry stroking. “Do you have lube?”

“Should I make out with your ears again to get you to hush?” Dejun muses, but he’s obviously enjoying himself and Mark feels so fucking _nice_ right now.

“I won’t complain,” Mark says. If someone told him he was glowing right now, he’d believe them.

Dejun laughs again with a shudder and thumbs across their slits once before slapping Mark’s stomach and telling him to “hold that thought I’m getting towels” as Mark’s nerves jump and sizzle in his groin.

He can’t complain that Dejun is already off him again when like, you know, expensive couch upholstery exists.

“And lube?” he teases, and Dejun graces him with an eye-roll as he hurries away half-naked. 

He knows he was just straddled, but it’s hitting him now that he hasn’t seen Dejun in any state of undress and the fact that like, wow, they’re _dating_ and Dejun has a birthmark on his ass is like. He doesn’t know. A gift from God. “We’re dating,” he tells the ceiling when Dejun passes out of earshot.

And laughs.

Then hums gently and lets himself swim in the pleasant disbelief of getting something he wanted almost before he knew he wanted it.

Dejun drops the bottle of lube on his nose.

“Fuck!” Mark sputters and laughs, trying to catch it before it slides off the couch. “Ow!”

“Up,” Dejun demands. “I’m setting down towels.” Dejun is still hard, peeking under the cum-shields, basically, he has draped over his arm. Mark’s pleased about it and sets the lube on the coffee table where the book and takeout have been woefully (not all that woefully, to be honest) forgotten.

He does stand, but he very deliberately gets in the way by tugging Dejun by the slim hips toward him and feeling Dejun’s dick poke his thigh. Dejun looks disgruntled and confused for an entire second before Mark’s cradling his face in both hands and pulling him in for a kiss.

 _He’s_ assertive this time. He sucks on Dejun’s bottom lip and licks into his mouth and oh. Dejun kind of fidgets and shifts and moans. Mark’s heard so many mixed reviews on french kissing—lots of complaints, really about too much tongue—but Dejun’s enjoying it and just. Mark flushes a little as Dejun lets his jaw go slack and Mark sucks on the tip of his tongue, and Mark has _never_ felt this open or excited to just. Try things. Do shit.

Nerves have always made him skittish and worried with sex and everything else, but Dejun’s paid attention to his ears and it was perfect, and Dejun kisses wet and gets harder by the second, and Mark’s losing the ability to think again.

They’re both breathing hard by the time Mark steps back, and Dejun’s blinking so rapidly that Mark kind of wants to kiss his eyelids.

“Towels,” Dejun mumbles.

Mark kisses the corner of his mouth. “I like you _so_ much.”

Dejun blushes as he nudges Mark away from him and drapes the cloths over the chenille. “I like you too,” he says after laying the two down, “so much. Day one.”

And like. Mark has some confidence—mostly in his abilities and less about himself as a person—but he hadn’t really processed that “day one” thing properly for a reason. He scratches his nape, trying to beg himself off of the smile itching through his face. He finally addresses it if only because Dejun’s said it twice, now. “Dang. Day one, really?”

Dejun tilts his own head to catch Mark’s lowered eyes. “You think me flirting with you was an act? That this last month of holding hands is a coincidence?”

Flirting? Touché on the hands thing but—“Wait. Hold on—” He gets pushed firmly back on the couch again, this time seated, and gets a lapful of Dejun’s smooth skin and a navel kiss from the head of Dejun’s cock.

When has Dejun flirted with him?

“Later,” Dejun coaxes, and Mark lets himself be kissed.

Johnny says he has tunnel vision, but really—a-ah fuck.

“Unfair,” Mark garbles the second Dejun’s sucking on his earlobe again, fireworks reigniting.

“All’s fair in consensual sex,” Dejun whispers, and Mark laughs through a shiver cascading down his body. Dejun’s scratching gently at his scalp, too, and Mark’s forcibly thinking through the static that he wants to make Dejun fall apart too. Maybe not right now. He hopes they have time. He hopes they have all the time in the world.

Mark slides his hands across Dejun’s body, up under his top, feeling his skin. Dejun nibbles and sucks and licks and whenever Mark opens his eyes, the apartment is complete pointillism and an ecstatic blurriness. His breathing is coming in trembling, shallow gasps again, brain loud with sheer nothingness. He feels like a guitar string getting stroked.

Dejun switches ears again, murmuring out a tentative, “It doesn’t get old?”

“No,” Mark answers faintly, rhythmically skimming his palms over and up and down Dejun’s sides, back, thighs.

When Dejun returns to kissing his lips, Mark holds him steady and leans forward, searching blindly for the lube and jamming his fingers up against the plastic bag twice. He finds the bottle while rolling his tongue over Dejun’s bottom lip and flips the lid.

From there, it’s just mixed breaths and panting and the little bead of sweat ticking down from Dejun’s hairline. Dejun runs his hand over their shafts as Mark works their heads and eventually gives up on trying to kiss. He mumbles his lips against the crook of Dejun’s neck where the strap is slipping down and his skin is unblemished and smooth, spared by the back acne that Mark’s kind of in love with.

It’s just a very human chemical imbalance, but every abnormality and quirk and imperfection is just. Dejun. And he’s delighted to find that Dejun’s orgasm face is ridiculously unflattering and perfect on every level. That he has a scar on his thigh and he needs to shave his chin again and just. Dejun. His friend—now lover—but still a really, really close friend.

“God I like you,” Mark says one more time after coming down from his own climax, and Dejun hides his face against Mark’s shoulder, catching his breath and digging his fingernails a little into Mark’s skin.

“We’re not going to be weird in the morning, are we?” asks Dejun, voice smothered but still intelligible. 

“If you’re not going to be, I’m not either,” Mark says. That’s not strictly true—he’s nervous about a lot of things and he’s probably almost definitely going to overthink this, but Dejun’s kind of the nervous type, too, so Mark simply…won’t be weird about it. He can take that lead. Maybe they both will.

Dejun kisses his skin, tongue hot and soft and gentle. Mark tilts his head to the side for him. “I like you, too,” Dejun says eventually after Mark has nearly lost himself in the drowsy pleasantness.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Mark says, wrapping his arms around Dejun’s middle so maybe he can carry him to the bathroom.

“But it’s true,” Dejun retorts. “And I said it first.” He kisses Mark’s ear, and Mark gives the tiniest shiver in response, smiling when he can feel Dejun smile, too.

They sit cuddled into each other for a little longer, Mark’s legs going ever so slightly numb and keeping him from drifting off.

But small moments end. “I’m hungry,” Dejun tells Mark’s shoulder just as Mark is finding the drying cum to be kind of super unpleasant.

A few seconds pass. Neither of them move.

“I’m getting off, now,” says Dejun, not moving.

“Alright,” Mark laughs, snuggling a kiss into Dejun’s hairline. Is this the honeymoon phase? He really can’t tell, but he’s happy either way.

“Okay. Now,” Dejun says, and makes an aborted attempt.

“O-okay.” Mark’s laughter is starting to defeat him.

“Now.” Unmoving.

“Get off!” Mark cries with a laugh so strong it begs tears, and it’s only then that Dejun dismounts, face scrunched as his breathy giggle fights its way out of his chest.

Dejun offers his hand and Mark takes it.

Mark wishes for so much time. Time to know Dejun even more, to know how his mind works, how he ticks, how he falls apart in pleasure. It’s so funny to Mark that he wants this so badly so abruptly that he’s truly convinced he’s wanted it all along and just didn’t realize it. It was all that built-up Dejun time peaking to a string of epiphanies that should probably have come earlier, but he’s happy _now._

“Want to shower together?” Mark asks him as Dejun opens up the bag on the coffee table and fishes out some fried chicken in his half-naked state. Dejun looks surprised for a moment, fingertips saucy, as if believing Mark would zone out for longer.

“Yeah,” he says anyway with messy fingers and a scrunchy grin.

Mark is so happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Sandy, Shauna, and Elton for reading! I'll link any xiaomark my friends publish with me today below ♡ 
> 
> Sandy's: [carved for the gods](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25736773)  
> Shauna's: [It's A Trip!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738078)
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/speckledsolana)   
>  [curiouscat](https://t.co/zW26zmaxzw?amp=1)   
> 


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